Breaking: Texas Judge Rules PrEP Coverage Violates Religious Freedom
A Federal judge in Texas has ruled partially in favor of plaintiffs that argued that requiring insurance companies to cover medications for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, violates their rights on religious grounds.
Jonathan Mitchell, who founded a one-person law firm in 2018 intending to challenge decades-old Supreme Court rulings, brought the case Braidwood Management Inc., vs.
Xavier Becerra, in the Northern District of Texas. There, United States district judge Reed O’Conner ruled in favor of plaintiffs who argued that paying for insurance that covers PrEP violates their religious beliefs because PrEP “enable[s and encourages] homosexual behavior.”In the 42-page ruling, O’Connor writes, “The PrEP mandate violates Braidwood’s rights under [Religious Freedom Restoration Act].”Mitchell helped draft Texas’s Senate Bill 8, the restrictive 2021 abortion law that made everyday people bounty hunters who could sue anybody they believed may have been involved with the procedure.O’Connor was appointed by George W.
Bush in 2007. He is no stranger to controversial rulings.“When it comes to this kind of lawsuit, you have to know the context of where it’s filed,” Harvard Cyber Law Clinic instructor Alejandra Caraballo told The Advocate’s sibling publication Plus recently. “[Conservative attorneys] know how to game the system to get particular judges like...Reed O’Connor.”A coalition of conservative groups sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to allow them to discriminate based on religious grounds, and O’Connor ruled in 2021 that they could proceed.
